Employees of local branches of Wilko are fearing they will lose their jobs after the company announces an shake-up of staffing roles.

Formerly called Wilkinsons, it has become the latest retailer to swing the axe on jobs as costs rise and the trading environment gets increasingly tougher.

The Wilko branch in Ferndown (Image: Google Streetview)

The company is consulting with its 3,900 employees nationwide, about staffing roles. Wilko has five local stores - in Victoria Road, Ferndown, The Doiphin Centre in Poole, in Boscombe and two in Bournemouth - so this could affect hundreds of families across the county as workers go through this stressful process.

Retail Week has reported that the retailer, who is renowned for its purse pleasing products, has said that a level of supervision would be stripped out across all its stores. It has countered that though but saying that there would be 1,000 new senior roles created and a significant amount of customer service roles.

Anthony Houghton, Wilko retail director, said that the move was necessary to ensure ‘all retail operations are fit for the future’.

He added that despite the increase in customers and efforts being made to reduce costs, the current landscape remains very challenging and this has meant to the lowering of profits.

The most recent accounts for Wilko shows that pre-tax profits had fallen by a huge 80 percent, in the year to 28th January. This was largely due to a £12.9m jump in costs after the EU referendum led to a sterling slump.

Wilko has also hit out at the National Living Wage, saying that it ‘was well above expected levels’ and had really hit the retailer hard.

Speaking about the changes to staffing, Mr Houghton said: "The simpler, newly defined store structure will give teams greater variety within their roles and result in more team hours on the shop floor, delivering a better customer experience.”

However the GMB Trade union has had a meeting with company bosses and it hopes that talks can reduce the number of job losses.

Gary Carter, GMB national officer, said: “This was the first of many discussions we will have with the company during the 60 day consultation.

“We will be having further, difficult conversations during the process.

“We’ve had people on the phone to us in tears – people who have been with the company 20 or 30 years.

“We all want to see Wilko as thriving, sustainable business with a long term future.

“It is vital GMB helps the company keep any job losses to an absolute minimum.

“It is important to ensure adequate staffing levels in their stores to maintain an acceptable level of customer service – and to make sure Wilko staff are paid the living wage.